A group of right-wing Israeli settlers tried to set fire to a Palestinian home near Bethlehem Sunday night, and spraypainted racist graffiti on the home and nearby structures.The graffiti included ‘Death to Arabs’, which has become a rallying cry in recent years for the right-wing settler movement, whose state objective is to rid the West Bank of its indigenous Palestinian inhabitants and take over their land to annex it to Israel.
The incident took place at around 2:30 am, Monday morning, in the village of al-Manshiya southeast of Bethlehem.
According to reports from local sources, the settlers poured gasoline on the home of Younis Abu Dayyeh in the village, and spraypainted racist slogans, then tried to light the gasoline on fire. They were chased out by the villagers before they managed to carry out the arson attack.
This incident is just the latest in a string of arsons, sabotage, property destruction and racist graffiti by settlers, in addition to violent attacks on Palestinian farmers and shepherds with guns, sticks and rocks.
In the last week, Israeli settlers uprooted over one hundred olive trees belonging to Palestinian farmers near Nablus. In this case, as in many others, the destruction of the olive trees deprives the Palestinian farmers of their sole source of livelihood, and is an attempt to force them out of the West Bank.
The uprooting of the trees was also accompanied by racist graffiti reading ‘Death to Arabs’ and ‘Pricetag’.
